Seattle sommelier hacks wine world with award-winning site

Sommelier Madeline Puckette of the blog Wine Folly displays one of the many infographics she has designed for the site at her Seattle home office. Puckette, who estimates she’s tried between 5,000-6,000 wines, hopes her blog makes it easier to connect to the world of wine. (LINDSEY WASSON / THE SEATTLE TIMES)

When you order a bottle of wine, do you have any idea what you’re doing?

I don’t. That’s not quite true: I’m figuring it out, but slowly, over years and in spite of looks from friends who wonder why I’m swirling my glass like an idiot.

And why not? This late in the information age, is there any excuse anymore for something not to be easily understandable?

Madeline Puckette checks out a poster print of her latest wine infographic at ColorGraphics in Seattle. (Photo: Mónica Guzmán)

I met Puckette Thursday at ColorGraphics in Seattle, where she checked a print run for the latest in a series of posters that have become the main revenue generator for her site. This one, which goes on sale this week, features a detailed, colorful grid that describes which wines pair best with which foods.

When the press operator tuned his reds and blues to her liking, Puckette signed the approved print and tacked on some praise, in all caps: “Badass!”

Madeline was a 25-year-old graphic designer at a struggling Nevada newspaper when she walked into the wine bar that changed her life. The overworked barkeep and owner at West Street Wine Bar in Reno noticed that his newest customer knew her way around his drinks.

It was no accident. Puckette’s dad, wanting her to “drink smart,” had given his daughter a two-bottle-a-month wine subscription for her 21st birthday. Puckette was hooked.

Puckette speaks with a measured rhythm until you get her going about aged Bordeaux or that sausage-smelling pinot noir she hated so much the other night that she had to buy a glass. And she laughs freely, like a kid. She has the air of someone who’s comfortable doing things differently.

The barkeep handed Puckette two thick wine books and proposed a challenge: Read these, come back in a week, and you’ve got a job.

(Source: Scarborough 2013)

One thing led to another, and two months after she visited Seattle to take her certified sommelier exam in 2010, the budding wine connoisseur with dreams of moving to New York moved here instead — along with her boyfriend, her cat and her Ford Focus.

In 2011, when the daily grind of server work at Seattle’s RN74 started to wear her down, she and her boyfriend, developer Justin Hammack, had a thought: Why not start a blog?

Hammack built the site and Puckette worked on content. Wine Folly launched in December 2011 but got its big break with How to Choose Wine, a flowchart that combined Puckette’s wine smarts with her sense of humor. Choosing wine for a get-together + Don’t know the people —-> “Bring a boring bottle and hope no one opens it.”

Puckette follows data geeks online to get new ideas on how visualizations can bring simplicity to the world of wine.

Weeks later, Puckette quit her job at Capitol Hill restaurant Poppy to take on Wine Folly full time.

(Photo: Mónica Guzmán)

Of course, simplifying something as nuanced as wine isn’t what all wine enthusiasts like to see.

“Go to /r/wine and post anything about Wine Folly and they will tear you to pieces,” Puckette said, referring to the wine community on Reddit.

To explain why, she picked up a pen.

“This is the learning curve for most things,” she said, drawing a straight sloping line. “This,” she said, drawing a second line, “is the learning curve for wine.”

The curve climbed and bent back into a cliff’s edge. Puckette, explaining that she’d seen this elsewhere, drew one stick figure hanging off the cliff and another standing on top of it, pointing at the first figure and laughing.

Puckette wants to reach down and give that first guy a hand.

Heck. I’ll take it.

Mónica Guzmán’s column appears in Sunday’s Seattle Times. Got a story about living with technology in the Northwest — or know someone she should meet? Send her an email, follow her on Twitter @moniguzman or send her a message on Facebook.